The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly [77]
I put my hands in my pockets and looked down at my feet. I counted to three in my head and when I looked up I was staring directly at Furlong.
“What this case is really about is money. It’s about the epidemic of foreclosure that has swept across our country. This was not a simple act of vengeance. This was the cold and calculated murder of a man who was threatening to expose the corruption of our banks and their agents of foreclosure. This is about money and those who have it and will not part with it at any cost—even murder.”
I paused again, shifting my stance and moving my eyes across the whole panel. They came to a female juror named Esther Marks and held. I knew she was a single mother who worked as an office manager in the garment district. She probably made less than the men doing the same job and I had her pegged as someone who would be sympathetic to my client.
“Lisa Trammel was set up for a murder she did not commit. She was the patsy. The fall guy. She protested the bank’s harsh and fraudulent foreclosure practices. She fought against them and for that she was kept away with a restraining order. The very things that made her a suspect to lazy investigators were what made her a perfect patsy. And we’re going to prove it to you.”
All their eyes were on me. I’d captured their complete attention.
“The state’s evidence won’t stand,” I said. “Piece by piece we’ll knock it down. The measure by which you are charged to make your decision here is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I urge you to pay close attention and to think for yourself. You do that and I guarantee that you’ll have more reasonable doubt than you’ll know what to do with. And you’ll be left with only one question. Why? Why was this woman charged with this crime? Why was she put through this?”
One final pause and then I nodded and thanked them for their attention. I quickly moved back to my seat and sat down. Lisa reached over and put her hand on my arm as if to thank me for standing for her. It was one of our choreographed moves. I knew it was an act but it still felt good.
The judge called for a fifteen-minute break before the start of testimony. As the courtroom emptied, I stayed in place at the defense table. My opener had continued my sense of momentum. The prosecution would hold sway over the next few days but Freeman was now on notice that I was coming after her.
“Thank you, Mickey,” Lisa Trammel said as she got up to go out into the hall with Herb Dahl, who had come through the gate to collect her.
I looked at him and then I looked at her.
“Don’t thank me yet,” I said.
Twenty-two
After the break, Andrea Freeman came out of the gate with what I called the prosecution’s scene-setter witnesses. Their testimony was often dramatic but did not get to the guilt or innocence of the defendant. They were merely called as part of the architecture of the state’s case, to set the stage for the evidence that would come later.
The trial’s first witness was a bank receptionist named Riki Sanchez. She was the woman who found the victim’s body in the parking garage. Her value was in helping to set a time of death and in bringing the shock of murder to the everyday people on the jury.
Sanchez commuted to work from the Santa Clarita Valley and therefore had a morning routine that she strictly adhered to. She testified that she regularly pulled into the bank garage at 8:45 A.M., which gave her ten minutes to park, get to the employee entrance and be